Childrearing attitudes and reported practices in depressed, abusive, and normal mothers are investigated. Participants are mothers in two studies in the Laboratory--childrearing in families with and without parental depression and childrearing in an environment in which there is parental abuse of the child. Mothers selected from the first study have diagnoses of unipolar depression or normal; mothers in the research on child abuse were referrals from protective service agencies and mothers from the community with no history of abuse and matched in socio-economic status. Participants completed an inventory probing childrearing attitudes, values, behaviors, and goals (Block Q-Sort). Depressed mothers were more inconsistent than normal mothers in their reported practices. They were more likely to forget promises they had made to their children and threaten punishment more often than they actually carry it out. Abusive mothers were characterized by wide-ranging and pronounced deficits in rearing. They valued harsh discipline, felt angered and disappointed by their child, devalued their child's opinion, and were critical of their child's shortcomings. Findings of this study identify specific areas in childrearing in which parents with emotional disturbances manifest deficits which may contribute to the development of emotional problems in their children.